A Coruña - A typical Sunday evening

Its great to be in A Coruña on a Sunday. The bars are full of locals who have scant regard for the fact that tomorrow is Monday.
Es genial estar en A Coruña en domingo. Los bares están llenos de coruñeses y no importa que mañana sea lunes.

In the bar/restaurant Alcume in the centre of town (as in all the bars) the people are eating, drinking and of course they love chatting with friends.
En el bar Alcume ,en el centro de la ciudad (como todo los bares) se come, se bebe y, por supuesto, encanta conversar con amigos.

Before dinner and after dinner the Spanish like to go out for a stroll not just in A Coruña but all over Spain.
Antes y después de cenar a los españoles les gusta salir a caminar; no sólo en A Coruña, sino en toda España.

Inside the bar/restaurant Alcume el Señor Parillada the bar owner is hard at it. For him Sunday is not a day for rest - on the contrary he has to prepare meals for his customers.
Dentro del bar/restauarante Alcume el señor Parillada, el dueño, trabaja mucho. Para él el domingo no es un día de descanso, al contrario, tiene que preparar las comidas al gusto de los clientes.

He has had this bar/restaurant for 30 years . Normally the bar opens at 8 and closes at 11.30. – perhaps a little later on Saturdays and Sundays.
Regenta este bar/restaurante desde hace treinta años. Normalmente el bar abre a las ocho de la tarde y cierra a las once y media, quizás un poco más tarde los sábados y domingos.

At 8 o’clock sharp (if his Casio is on the ball) he lights the barbecue and one of the waiters brings in the meat from the outside fridge where it has been on display for all to see. There’s chicken, spare ribs, spicy sausage, pork and lamb chops and of course steaks.
A las ocho en punto (si su casio está en hora) enciende la barbacoa y uno de los camereros le lleva la carne del frigorífico fuera, donde todo se pueda ver. Hay pollo, costilla, chorizo y chuletas de cordero y de cerdo y, por supuesto, entrecotes.

As well as the usual utensils Señor Parillada is armed with a litre of water, a coffee jar of salt and dozens of lemons. His chef uniform is rounded off by his blue plastic gloves.
Además de los utensilios habituales el Señor Parillada tiene también un litro de agua potable, muchos limones y una jarra grande que contiene sal. Su traje de cocinero se termina con los guantes de plástico azules.

At just the right moment and with just the right amount of food at the ready the cooking begins. From time to time Señor Parillada will disappear behind a wall of steam as he controls the flames with the water bottle.
Al momento exacto y con sólo el alimento suficiente comienza el espectáculo. De vez en cuando el Señor Parillada desaparece al fondo de una pared de vapor para controlar las llamas con el agua.

The meat is doused in salt and lemon and turned by Señor Parillada until perfectly cooked. It is then chopped, plated and served with bread, salad, Spanish style chips and a wonderful spicy sauce.
Empapa la carne en sal y limón y la gira hasta que esté lista, entonces un camerero la corta y la sirve con pan, vino, ensalada mixta, patatas fritas y una salsa picante muy especial.

The local beer or a jug of local wine rounds off this simple feast.
Una jarra del vino de la casa o una cerveza complementa este sencillo banquete.

Another Sunday in AC ends with a coffee and a short stroll back to the hotel.
Se termina otro domingo en el paraíso con un café y un paseo al hotel.

A Coruña - Ordering food : the basics

Okay you’ve been in AC for 12 hours, you’ve visited 14 bars and sunk as many beers so you’re getting a bit peckish and keen to try out a tapa or two.

By now your confidence will be sky high as you’ve seen people react in a positive way to your Spanish skills and you now know that ordering things is a doddle – completely different to how it is in some countries.

Our advice is that you avoid the places that can afford to advertise that they do the best tapas. The people who actually do serve the best tapas need to advertise for more punters like they need a hole in the head.

You do have a very wide choice but eventually you will be able to spot the good ones a mile off. Just about all bars do some sort of food - the customers expect it.

In future, we will be prepared for all eventualities but for the moment you need to perhaps follow a couple of simple rules to get with the flow. If you can see the tapas in the glass cases on the bar this will give you a feel for things. If the locals are having tapas it’s a safe bet to join them. Generally speaking a bar restaurant is the best place for tapas as the care they take with their main dishes is usually reflected in the quality of their tapas.

It will help you considerably if you can resign yourself to sticking to one tapa or perhaps two to get things moving and to keep your confidence high. If you find yourself on a roll then have a look at some of the useful phrases below to move things along apace.

Lets say for example that you like ham and cheese. The ham is usually Jamon serrano or smoked ham and is carved from a leg of pork sitting on the bar. (bolied ham is jamon de york and is not usually seen in bars or served as a tapa)

Cheese is usually goats cheese and the type you need is puro or pure.

Jamon varies in quality and if you can bear to look at the hoof a black one carries better quality meat than a white one as the animal will have been fed a better diet usually consisting of acorns.

The Spanish are not so squeamish as we are when it comes to food and they don’t mind knowing the details. For example they refer to some meats as lechal or from milk. This does not mean that it is cooked in milk but rather that the young animal was taken from its mother and despatched for the table whilst still suckling from her.

When this was explained to me by a Spaniard I said I couldn’t possibly eat that lamb knowing he was taken from his mother. The Spaniard’s reply was “don’t worry about it, his mother’s on the next table.”

Anyway back to the ham and cheese.

I have mentioned before about everything being masculine or feminine and you will have to learn which is which when you learn the word. For the purpose of this exercise most of the words are feminine.

Tag your tapas onto your drinks order by using the word “Y” pronounced ee – it means “and”.

The phrase you for need for a slice or two of jamon is una tapa de jamon (or queso or both)

So altogether:

“Una caña y una tapa de jamon por favor”= a small beer and a tapa of ham please.

Phonetically this works out roughly as “oo-na can-ya ee oo-na ta-pa day
ha-mon por favor” Just as an aside a Spaniard would say the phrase without any gaps between the words– they would all run into each other- that’s the main reason we can’t catch what the blighters are saying!

The double “o”s sound like the English “u” and the “a”s are always said as in the English cat. “e”s sound like the “e” in egg.

For the technically minded all Spanish letters with one or two exceptions are pronounced the same all the time. H is never pronounced in Spanish but the “J”s are said like aitches. If you say the Scottish word loch the c and the h at the end are close to the sound of a Spanish J.

You can substitute the jamon bit for the cheese bit in which case you would say “kay-so” rather than “ha-mon”.

You might start to panic a little if you are asked about the type of ham or cheese but that’s easy as well. They may double check to see whether you want their ham by asking jamon serrano? (say-rr-ano) in which case you just say si (yes, pronounced see) and perhaps point at the leg on the bar or hanging from the ceiling.

If they query the type of cheese they may use the word puro (poo-row – as in boat) and again you will just say si or si puro.

It cannot be more complicated than that. If in doubt just say si to everything – it’s two quids worth of food and drink for goodness sake even if you just get some experience its worth it. With a one hour one to one Spanish lesson costing £50 these days you can afford to be generous.

Life’s too short to make a fuss as they say in Spain - just have what comes.

You now have your drink and tapa and the regard of everyone in the bar. It may have been like the scene from American Werewolf in London initially (where the two guys walked into the pub on the moor and you could hear a pin drop) but once you took your deep breath and blurted out your order you were elevated from the status of gringo/tourist/foreigner to that of someone normal just having a drink and a snack to help keep you going – a local.

A Coruña - The language you'll need

According to people who should know better, some one million mobile phones are bought in this country each year and then shoved in a drawer somewhere and never see the light of day again.

Where would we all be without drawers I hear you ask?

Well drawers are good for hiding and storing some unwanted items but their importance pales into insignificance when compared to the importance of bookshelves.

In the UK, five million Spanish language books are bought each year by people smitten by Espana. You know what its like; the sangria’s flowing and the sun’s shining and you vow not to return to Tossa de Mar without being able to give Manuel the “awright mate fancy a cup a tea” waiter a dose of his own medicine.

You consider joining a conversational Spanish class and then decide that the first thing you need is a textbook to get you back in the mood. Ignoring the books bought for schools and colleges about 250,000 other people are thinking along the same lines as you every October.

So its off to Smiths or online to Amazon to sort it all out but when you do get round to flicking through the pages the 13 verb tense endings to learn under a language where the word for “dog” sounds the same as for “but” and where adjectives come after nouns and everything is either masculine or feminine soon has you eyeing up your bookcase for a slot to store your new Spanish textbook – permanently.

After all - you’ll probably be going to Greece next year anyway and everybody speaks English there. In order to learn the beautiful Spanish language you have to have a passion to go with it. For example, romance spurs the mind into action as does food.

On the assumption that “dos canas y un bocadillo de queso por favor” (two beers and a cheese sandwich please) may be more use to you than what Ingrid Bergman said to Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca – “besame como si fuera la ultima vez” (kiss me as if it were for the last time) - we intend to concentrate on food and drink as a way to improve your Spanish speaking skills.

In the case of AC this food is both delicious and good value and the place to go to get the best of it is not where the restaurant owner impresses you with his English (by telling the sort of jokes a five year old wouldn’t laugh at) but in the places where the menu is pinned to the wall or is no more than a blackboard and where the people are too busy getting on with their own lives to be interested in yours by learning English.

That said they will be polite, patient and overwhelmingly helpful but try and bear in mind that set meals for a fiver cooked on a barbeque in the glare of an open bar is their way of life and is not just a gimmick for commercial gain or for your amusement.

Having made up your mind that you might be able to string three or four words together and accept that the 25 Spaniards in the bar listening with one ear aren’t going to roll about laughing at you for trying to get by (they will only help and encourage and apologise for their own shortcomings) why not go for it?

On this trip to AC you will need to eat and drink something. The Hotel food will be acceptable, especially breakfast, and the 5 star restaurant run by the owner who speaks superb English because he used to be the wine waiter at the Ritz might be part of your plans - but they should be a small part only.

You might consider why with 500 bar/restaurants in AC you, or anybody else for that matter, would need to stay in the hotel or go English! These establishments may however prove useful as somewhere you can go to get exactly what you want in a language you understand - but at a price!

For the moment why not try your hand in a local bar/restaurant. The usual rules apply and the most important of these is keeping it simple. You’re not going to spend a fortnight in the place and neither is anyone else – they want to serve you quickly, politely and with a minimum of fuss and then see the back of you. Its best to go straight up to the bar itself rather than complicating things by getting a table and then trying to catch someone’s eye.

As you stroll up the person serving will greet you. He or she may say any number of things but no matter all you need to say is Hola, pronounced O-la. Then say what DRINK you want. Nothing else just the drink. If you wanted a small draught beer you would just say “una caña” – its pronounced oonah canya. He or she will understand straightaway. If you are feeling brave stick a por favor – please- on the end but its not necessary or expected. Asking politely is expected.

Whilst they are still reeling from the power of your grasp of the Spanish language (and probably from the fact that they have been privileged enough to meet the only Englishman this century to be able to order a beer in AC correctly) hit them with the other drink by saying “ y una coca cola” pronounced “ee oona coca cola” which roughly translated means: and a coke.

When your drinks arrive don’t pay, you wouldn’t pay for a meal upfront anywhere else other than probably in Tesco’s in the UK or a restaurant in Benidorm and you won’t be paying here until you have found the drink to your liking, have enjoyed it and watched the world go by for 20 minutes or so.

In a touristy type place you may receive a chitty with the drinks saying how much you owe. In AC you will have to ask “how much is that or how much do I owe you or can I have my bill” which in itself may be overkill for a beer and a coke.

Go back up to the bar to the person who took the order and just say “Cuanto es” – how much is it? Almost without exception you will get a little till receipt or will see the numbers on the register so you don’t have to understand the price that the barperson rattles off. In any event you should always carry a 5 euro note. You know this will cover the two drinks with plenty of change so just hand it over whatever is said.

On most occasions your change will be returned to you in a saucer. If you want to, leave a coin or two in the saucer as a tip and take your leave. What could possibly have gone wrong? Nothing. Say gracias and adios and head off to the next bar you fancy.

If you are going for food the same rules apply although you may have to compromise initially. There may be oodles of mouth-watering dishes on the menu but you need to know what you want before you go in. If you want the octopus cooked in its own ink followed by roast suckling pig then see the English speaking restaurant owner above – just remember to book a week in advance.

If on the other hand your mind is fixed on a tapa (a small portion) or a racion (a much bigger portion) of ham or olives or loin or mussels or a burger or a pork chop or a salad or a bowl of garlic soup or some spicy sausage or some roast potatoes in a dipping sauce or chicken wings or spare ribs or a toasted ham and cheese sandwich or a slice of ice cream cake or cheesecake then you need to work out how to order one or all of these in Spanish to add to your drinks round. It’s just as easy and by using real Spanish to order you will end up with real Spanish food.

So remember when you come to AC it is best to leave that mobile in the drawer at home but whatever you do don’t leave your new Spanish book in the bookcase or you could end up missing it.

Buen provecho!